Hellen Keller

Helen Keller

Helen Keller was born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. When Helen was only nineteen months she fell terribly ill. Finally, the illness passed but in passing it took her sightand hearing. Helen was blind and deaf at the age of two.
Before she learned how to read and communicate she acted like a caged animal, imprisoned in a world of darkness. Helen seemed to be mad atthe world, placed in a society she could neither understand nor take part of because of her disability.
Searching for help, Helen’s father, Captain Arthur Keller, wrote to Dr. Alexander Graham Bellwhose own mother and wife were deaf. He referred Mr. Keller to Michael Anagnos, the director of the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston, Massachusetts. Mr. Anagnos found Annie Sullivan, atwenty-one year old lady who could guide Helen out of the confines of her caged world. It took Annie a week just too tame Helen so that she could begin the long process of teaching her how tocommunicate. She would spell words using sign language in Helen’s hands but Helen had no idea what the spelling meant. However one day as Helen and Annie were walking, they passed by someone pumping water.Annie put Helen’s hand under the pump and Helen later recalls, “. . . as the cool stream gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, mywhole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. I knew then that W-A-T-E-R meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. As we returned to the house every object I touchedseemed to quiver with life.”
After six months Helen knew 300 words, could count to thirty, knew her times tables, mastered Braille, and wrote her first letter using a special writing board withgrooves cut in it. She later learned how to speak by putting her fingers inside a teacher’s mouth and learning how the sounds were made and the tongue and lips moved to produce each sound.
Through...